This invention relates in general to group education systems and, in particular, to a self-study educational communication system whereby a student may respond to data presented at an individual rate of progress and repeat the program in accordance with individual needs. The system may be modified to meet individual educational system parameters through programming the correct response pattern to obtain the objective and functional requirements of the educational system.
More specifically, this invention relates to a teaching device which utilizes repetitive or reinforcing teaching techniques. The correct responses to predetermined data or information are indicated visually to stimulate interest retention and require the coordination of the students' mental and motor skills. The correct responses may be programmed to prevent patterned response based solely on the physical positional relationship of the data presented and the responses.
In the field of education, student enrollment within our institutions of higher learning has nearly tripled in the last twenty years, and it is predicted to increase one and one-half times in the next decade. This increase in enrollment has necessitated educational institutions to utilize large classes where the student-to-teacher ratio becomes magnified to such an extent that communication from the student to the teacher becomes stifled. The flow of information between the instructor and student in this environment is perhaps only fair, and the amount of feedback from the student to the instructor is usually very poor.
In addition to the poor educational communication between the student and the instructor, such an educational system must transmit information to a student at a rate based upon the evaluation made by the instructor as to the capabilities of the largest number of students. Therefore, certain students who have the capabilities of progressing and assimilating information at a much more rapid rate are precluded from obtaining this information in accordance with their comprehension ability. These students find that the subject matter does not present an intellectual challenge, thereby reducing their incentive and leading to boredom. Other students in the same large classroom are unable to comprehend the subject matter as rapidly as the instructor presents it to them, thereby frustrating the students, destroying their initiative, causing them to lose self-confidence in their learning ability and to intellectually withdraw from the information being transmitted by the instructor.
In view of the problems associated with the traditional large classroom type of education, many attempts have been made to provide independent study environment to enable a student to obtain the educational data from an instructor or other source of information on an individual basis. Programmed teaching has been developed in an attempt to overcome these problems. However, such individual independent study systems have been extremely costly. Even though these systems have been very successful in achieving these objectives, their high cost in view of the many constraints on school budgets has made their installation prohibitive.
In addition to the high cost of the systems each of the systems has been designed to meet the particular requirements of the educational system and may not be modified without extensive and costly changes. In view of the rapid and frequently changing concepts in education today, these inflexible programmed teaching systems have been unsatisfactory. In order to meet the system demands of educators and to enable them to modify any educational program to meet their unique requirements within the limited constraints of educational bedgeting, it becomes necessary that the educational communication system equipment which they utilize be adaptable to satisfy their various educational programs.